


wade a sea of pasts

by lost_decade



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Dementia, M/M, Near Future, Nostalgia, Post-Divorce, vague formula e references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 09:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14210205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: It’s good to see Sina, even though the frail white haired woman at the table is not the same Sina that Lewis remembers from his childhood, standing at the sidelines barely able to look at her son and his friend as they charged after each other in their karts. She speaks to him as if he’s still the love of Nico’s life and that, more than anything else is what kills Lewis.





	wade a sea of pasts

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Boys Life by Small Black
> 
> Set about 12 years from now.

"Could you pass the pepper?" Lewis asks, looking up from his pasta and holding out a hand to roughly take the grinder that Nico passes to him, careful that their fingers don't touch. Being in Nico's home is strange, bits and pieces of furniture that he'd long since forgotten about jogging his memory, electric shock treatment that forces images to take shape in his brain rather than frying them all out - as if everything in the room takes on a significance based on what it is and what it is not.  
  
The love seat beside the window, teal upholstery now faded a little, is after all just a chair – but Lewis can't look at it without seeing himself and Nico sitting in a different apartment having a drink after dinner, looking out at the lights along the promenade and the darkness of the waves breaking on the shore at Larvotto. He stares at the chair for a long moment, admiring the sleek curves of the mahogany, the wood unchanged unlike everything else.  
  
“Erm, Lewis.”  
  
Lewis realises that he’s still aggressively turning the grinder, little black specks like ash covering the bowl of penne. He sets it back down next to the wine bottle, forming a little wall between himself and the two people on the other side of the table, almost as if that will protect him.  
  
“So when are you two going to have a baby? You can’t wait too long you know.”  
  
Lewis coughs, half choking as he inhales the ridiculous amount of pepper that’s starting to drown in the Arrabiata sauce. He forces a smile onto his face, looking over at Sina sitting at Nico’s side as he wonders what it’s like to live a memory as if it’s real.  
  
“Maybe one day,” Lewis tells her, trying to ignore the sinking feeling of loss that he has no real entitlement to. They could’ve had kids together – Lewis kind of always thought they would but they’d hated each other by the time he was even slightly emotionally ready so that was another thing that hadn’t happened.  
  
Nico mouths his thanks and Lewis watches him fiddle with the ring on his finger, sliding it around in a circle. It must feel weird – the matching one that sits on Lewis’ finger does, the weight of it like a time machine in platinum, as if he’ll look down and find he still has the hands of a thirty year old, not someone twelve years older than that. How fucked up too that they both kept them, just waiting in a drawer for some sad shit like this to happen.  
  
It’s good to see Sina, even though the frail white haired woman at the table is not the same Sina that Lewis remembers from his childhood, standing at the sidelines barely able to look at her son and his friend as they charged after each other in their karts. She speaks to him as if he’s still the love of Nico’s life and that, more than anything else is what kills Lewis.  
  
“I should head off,” Lewis whispers to Nico after they’ve finished the meal, as he’s helping his mum into her coat. Nico’s eyes are downcast, he looks tired, jaded by the evening and more than that.  
  
“Wait, please. Stay until I get back.”  
  
Lewis always did have a hard time saying no to him. He kisses Sina goodbye and helps himself to another glass of red wine while Nico drives her back to the retirement home, wandering through the rooms of the apartment trying to imagine Nico living in them. He looks around for photos of other lovers but finds none. The only picture on display in the dining room is one of their wedding, clearly put there to create the impression that they’re still together.  
  
Fuck this. He runs his finger over the glass of the frame, wiping away the dust. He should just get out of here before Nico comes back, get on the first flight to LA and avoid any kind of further conversation. But somehow he feels like Nico needs _someone_. Just someone – not Lewis.

But what if there is no other important someone.  
  
–  
  
“Hey, everything okay getting back,” Lewis asks when Nico walks through the door a half hour later, sighing heavily and leaning back against it.  
  
“She kept asking where Dad was on the drive. I just never know what to say to make it better, Lewis.” Nico takes the glass of wine that Lewis offers him, leaning in heavily when he awkwardly places a hand on his shoulder in comfort.  
  
Awfully, inevitably, they end up sitting in the stupid fucking love seat.  
  
“Thanks for this by the way,” Nico says when they've opened another bottle and the last of the daylight has faded. “Not just for coming for dinner but for all of it. Staying to talk. Pretending.”

“It's okay. I mean I always liked your mom. She wasn't as scary as Keke anyway.”

A smile plays at Nico's lips at that.  
“You sound so American,” he says, “you should come to Europe more often.”  
  
Lewis is about to tell Nico that he does but the implication that he's purposely avoided him for the best part of a decade probably isn't what he wants to hear.  
  
“You should come to Colorado,” he suggests instead. “Hit the slopes like we used to. Anyway, how is Sina, really?”  
  
Nico takes a slow sip of his wine, swirling it around in the glass. “Some days are better than others. You have to stay patient I guess. I shouldn't have...I just thought,” he pauses, placing the wine down on the coffee table and turning to look at Lewis. “She seemed so happy whenever she mentioned you, and she doesn't get out much anymore. She kept talking about you all the time and I just thought what harm would it do for her to see we were still together like she thinks we are, that we're happy.” Nico slides the ring from his finger, putting it down with a heavy metallic clang.  
  
“Are you?” Lewis asks, not sure what he wants the answer to be. “Happy, I mean. You dating anyone?”  
  
Nico smiles, suddenly coy. “Yes and sort of. It’s casual, just someone from work.”  
  
“Fuck, you're not shagging one of your drivers are you, man?”  
  
Nico's answering laughter is a sound that Lewis had forgotten he misses.  
  
“I'm not that unprofessional. Well, not quite.”  
  
Lewis is dying to ask who it is, but he's aware that Nico knows that's exactly what he's thinking. The games were fun once.  
  
“You look good,” he says instead.  
  
“I look like shit, Lewis.”  
  
“You look tired, but still good.”  
  
“Well, the last time we saw each other I wasn’t in a great place.”  
  
Lewis thinks back to it, the stony silence of the solicitor’s office. It's not a good memory.

“You really broke my heart,” he confesses, as if this is new information for Nico.  
  
“You broke mine.”  
  
“Well I guess that makes us even.”  
  
“If we were even I'd have four more world championships than I do.”

“You could’ve stayed, challenged me for a couple more.”  
  
“I think we both needed a break from each other by then, don’t you.”  
  
It’s still a sore point, still one of those things that Lewis hasn’t quite got over even with the space of all this time. He wonders what the answer would've been, if he'd actually _asked_ Nico to stay. “Your trophy cabinet’s a lot bigger than it was the last time I was in your apartment anyway, I don’t think you’ve got anything to complain about.”  
  
“Had a look around, then?”  
  
“Yeah there was nothing on TV.”  
  
Nico elbows him in the ribs before resting his head against Lewis’ shoulder for a moment. “You’re such a dick.”  
  
“And you’re such a bitchy princess, _Britney_.”  
  
“You know I always hated that fucking nickname.”

“Your own fault for being beautiful.” Lewis lowers his voice. “You still are, you know,” he finishes, slipping an arm around the German, a small sound of contentment escaping his lips as he feels Nico relax against him. “You’ve done an amazing job with the team, what you’ve achieved.”  
  
“You follow the series?”  
  
“Yeah, course I do, man.”  
  
“Oh. I assumed you wouldn’t. Never thought about doing the same – managing your own team, anything like that?”  
  
“No. It's not for me – racing or nothing. Fuck, sometimes I miss Monaco, you know. I forgot how amazing the sky is.” They both look out it, constellations bright above the sea. Lewis can’t remember the last time he saw the stars in Los Angeles, beyond the ones on Hollywood Boulevard.  
  
“It's something else, isn't it. Are you dating anyone then?” Nico asks him, swirling the wine around in the glass, breathing in the aroma.  
  
“No. Well. There are always people around.” There are people around that Lewis can't trust, with eyes full of adoration and hands that make him feel unclean, scrubbing his skin raw in the shower after they've left - of course he can't say this.  
  
Nico giggles, burying his head against Lewis’ shoulder. “Could you ever have imagined when we were karting that we’d do all this.”  
  
“I thought it would be a crazy dream if we even made it into F1 together. Look at us now.”  
  
“Yeah,” Nico agrees, but his tone is more sombre now. “Look at us.” He slips out of Lewis’ embrace, turning to look at him more closely, lost in the darkness of his eyes. Lewis wonders what it is that he sees.  
  
“It’s really good wine,” Lewis cuts through the growing atmosphere, gesturing towards the decanter.  
  
“It’s a 2001 Lafite. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”  
  
“Wow, times must be shit.” Lewis kicks himself mentally. “Fuck, that didn't sound how I meant it. I didn’t mean…”  
  
“My dad died, Lewis, my mum is ill. On top of that it hasn’t been the easiest season. If you’ve been watching then you’ve seen how many DNFs we’ve had.”  
  
“Sorry,”  
  
“It’s alright, it’s just us isn’t it. How we are together, how we always were.”  
  
“Some things never change.”  
  
“No, they don’t.”  
  
Nico’s phone vibrates on the table then, Lewis glancing at it to see the name of the sender and first few lines of the text.

**Alejandro**  
_Hope dinner went okay,_  
_want me to come over later?_

Nico blushes a little, swiping the message away quickly.

“You went straight to the top, huh?” Lewis says.  
  
“It wasn’t like that, it just sort of happened. Like I said, it’s casual. It’s got nothing to do with the team’s success, before you say anything.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to, I wouldn’t. I know you’re not like that.”  
  
“That’s not what you used to say.”  
  
“I was jealous, for ages I was jealous of you, when we were kids. And then after…I was terrified I was going to lose you. I was convinced you were screwing Toto for a while.”  
  
“I wasn’t. You were just paranoid.”  
Lewis can't think of a response that wouldn't betray too much, the silence between them growing until it feels as if it will swallow them both whole, each afraid to speak and break the thread that hangs weakly between their two worlds.  
  
It’s only now after years of separation that Lewis can allow himself to sink into this imagining of what time might have done to them if they’d decided to prize each other more than the trophies they fought for. He wonders where Nico’s replica is now, he hadn’t seen it in the cabinet and half imagines it gathering dust in a storage facility or housing some dried flowers, just part of the furniture, the sight of their names together etched into the metal too much for Nico to bear – or perhaps he’s reading too much into what significance he might still hold in Nico’s life. It occurs to him briefly, horribly, that there might not be any – that he’s here for Sina’s benefit only.  
  
When he thinks about it, Lewis can’t recall ever meeting Alejandro Agag, but the bitterness that makes him want to snarl some further sarcastic comment makes his pulse stutter fast. He’d give anything for a fight, for something. He’d give anything for Nico to look at him with such vitriol as he had after Spain all those years back, would sell his soul to feel as alive and sick and real as he had when the touch of the front wing of the sister Mercedes had sent them both spinning into the gravel.  
  
Any connection between them now is based on things long past; tomorrow the ring will be put back in the drawer, the picture replaced for one of someone that Nico actually knows – there is no place for them to slip into coexistence, seamlessly they will cross back into their new lives as if Lewis had never been here. It fills him with a sense of isolation, the loneliness of his life across the ocean – vanity projects and recording studios, more money than he could ever spend.  
  
“I could never live back in Monaco after so long in L.A. dude,” he is compelled to finally announce, “I couldn’t survive a week without dinner at Crossroads – there’s like what, one decent vegan place here.”  
  
“Maybe you could come to the race in Long Beach and we could go for dinner there after.” Nico suggests this with the utter confidence of a man who knows what he’s proposing is never going to happen.

“Maybe,” Lewis smiles.

Why couldn’t Nico have just accepted being the number two driver, that’s all it would’ve taken – that’s all they’d have needed to save what they had off the track. It makes Lewis so angry, that, yet buried somewhere he knows that if Nico had even given him an inch it would've killed the respect between them quicker than anything else could.

“You know, I do miss you,” Lewis forces himself to admit, just in case this is the last time they ever share a bottle of wine. He doesn’t know how to quite explain what it is that he misses – more than just Nico himself, but the feeling of being with someone who knows him so intrinsically, someone so in tune with him that they were almost the same person. They still are. He cups Nico’s face with both hands, swallowing hard and studying him carefully, drinking in all the changes. Nico looks back at him for an achingly long time and then his eyes slip closed, lips parting slightly. Lewis rubs his thumb over them, dragging against the chapped skin.

“I’d tell you that I'd do so many things differently, but you know it would be a lie,” he murmurs, leaning in and pressing his lips to Nico’s, gentle and chaste. He half expects when he opens his eyes that they’ll both have slipped into the world that Sina inhabits, that they’ll mean to each other what they once did. Although of course not.

“I should probably call a taxi.” Lewis shifts, draining the remainder of the wine from his glass.  
  
“You could stay, take the guest room. Please.”  
  
Lewis knows that Nico can see his hesitation, but he also knows Nico wouldn’t ask if he didn’t really need him here. “What about…” he gestures at Nico’s phone on the table.  
  
“It’s alright, I’ll ask him to come over tomorrow.”  
“Cool,” Lewis nods, standing up. “Cool.”  
  
“First door on the left,” Nico tells him. “Lewis?”  
  
“Yeah”  
  
“It doesn't matter.”  



End file.
